Presentation for the 2012 Digital Frontiers Conference. This presentation discusses research to measure the impact of digital assets in The Portal to Texas History.

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Annotated PowerPoint (ppt) version of this presentation is available for download.

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Abstract: The Portal to Texas History℠ is a gateway to humanities collections within the digital library of the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries. The Portal provides access to more than 190,000 digital objects, comprising over 2.6 million image files. The range of primary source materials includes maps, books, manuscripts, newspapers, diaries, photographs, and letters from the unique collections of Texas libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, genealogical societies, and private families. The Portal was launched in 2003 with collections from five content partners and currently includes materials from more than 190 partners. While increasing numbers of partners and assets are signs that making digitized resources Web-acessible is a desirable thing, digital libraries are increasingly expected to identify the impacts that have resulted from digitizing assets. In 2012, UNT Libraries began to investigate the impact of digitizing assets on two of the Portal's key stakeholder groups: content partner and users. An environmental scan identified seven possible impact categories: cultural, economic, educational, environmental, operational, political, and social. These categories served as the framework for data collection activities, which included five key informant interviews with content providers and surveys of both content partners (N = 58) and users (N = 314). Additionally, the Portal's historical log of user-submitted comments (N = 3,355) provided a rich source of data from users' perspectives. The seven impact categories proved a robust framework for data analysis and the findings were organized accordingly. This presentation will report the differential impacts discovered for the Portal's content partners and users.